While approaching the village of Chukhung, Nick Mestre and I became excited by the presence of many boulders, and we assumed we could explore them while acclimatizing for our main objective, the south face of Nuptse. Then the perfect rock pyramid of Amphu Gyabien (5,630m) came into view. Though overshadowed by the north ridge of Ama Dablam, it looked like a wall where we could do some fun rock climbing. On April 4, the day after our arrival at Chukhung, we headed to the base of the north face with a light rack. From the comfort of our tea house, it had looked like the climbing wouldn’t be much harder than 5.8. In fact, the difficulties started soon after we left.

We began the approach at 4 a.m., when the temperature was around -6°C. Nick slipped on a patch of ice and fell into a raging stream. He is a tough fella, so with help of a few dry layers we continued over unstable terrain that appeared to be the remains of an old glacier.

Arriving at the foot of the north face after 2.5 hours, we began simul-climbing the first 150m. Some sections were extremely loose, while others had nice cracks. We then belayed six long pitches of sustained climbing up to mid-5.11, overcoming many serious runouts. If anyone plans to repeat the route, we suggest bringing a hammer and an assortment of pins to eliminate most of the runouts.

By the time we reached the crest of the northwest ridge, there was a full-on whiteout with occasional clearings. The upper part of the ridge, leading to the summit, looked horribly loose and uninspiring. Fortunately, we were able to walk off the far side down a loose gully. We named our new route Beckey Swoop (IV 5.11b R).

Over the next few days, we did some research and found the peak was on the Ministry’s list of unclimbed peaks. Being so close to Chukhung, we doubted that would be the case, but as we were still acclimatizing and had nothing better to do, we returned on the 12th and scrambled to the summit via the northeast slope and ridge. [The peak was first climbed by approximately the same northeast route in spring 1953 by Bourdillon, Hunt, Noyce, and Ward from the Everest expedition, and no doubt many times since.]

— Vitaliy Musiyenko, USA